Variance Risk: A Bird’s Eye View∗ Fabian Hollstein† and Chardin Wese Simen‡ January 11, 2018 Abstract Prior research documents a significant variance risk premium (VRP) for the S&P 500 index but only for few equities. Using high-frequency data, we show that these results are affected by measurement errors in the realized variance estimates. We decompose the index VRP into factors related to the VRP of equities and the correlation risk pre- mium. The former mostly drives the variations in the index VRP while the latter mainly captures the level of the index VRP. The two factors predict excess stock returns in the time-series and cross-section, but at different horizons. Together, they improve the return predictability. JEL classification: G11, G12 Keywords: Correlation Swaps, Realized Variance, Return Predictability, Variance Swaps ∗We are grateful to Arndt Claußen, Maik Dierkes, Binh Nguyen, Marcel Prokopczuk, Roméo Tédon- gap and seminar participants at Leibniz University Hannover for helpful comments and discussions. Part of this research project was completed when Chardin Wese Simen visited Leibniz University Hannover. †School of Economics and Management, Leibniz University Hannover, Koenigsworther Platz 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany. Contact:
[email protected]. ‡ICMA Centre, Henley Business School, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6BA, UK. Contact:
[email protected]. 1 Introduction Carr & Wu(2009) and Driessen et al.(2009) document a significantly negative av- erage variance swap payoff (VSP) for the U.S. stock market index.1 However, they find significant VSPs only for a small number of individual equities that make up the stock index.